Wallace Triplett
Triplett on a 1950 Bowman football card
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| No. 18, 40, 47 | |||
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| Position: | Halfback | ||
| Personal information | |||
| Date of birth: | April 18, 1926 | ||
| Place of birth: | La Mott, Pennsylvania | ||
| Height: | 5 ft 10 in (1.78 m) | ||
| Weight: | 170 lb (77 kg) | ||
| Career information | |||
| College: | Penn State | ||
| NFL Draft: | 1949 / Round: 19 / Pick: 182 | ||
| Career history | |||
| Career NFL statistics | |||
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| Player stats at PFR | |||
| Player stats at NFL.com |
Wallace "Wally" Triplett (born April 18, 1926) is a former professional American football player, the first African-American to be drafted by and play for a National Football League team. For that reason, his portrait hangs in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.
Triplett, the son of a postal worker, was born and raised in the Philadelphia suburb of La Mott, Pennsylvania, part of Cheltenham Township. His reputation as a talented high school football player, combined with his upscale address, prompted the University of Miami to offer him a scholarship sight unseen, under the assumption Triplett was white. The then-segregated university rescinded the scholarship when they discovered Triplett was black. Triplett instead earned a Senatorial Scholarship for his academics and chose to attend Penn State University in the fall of 1945.
Along with Dennie Hoggard, Triplett was one of the first African-Americans to take the field in a varsity football game for Penn State. During the 1946 season, Penn State's Nittany Lions team voted to cancel a regular-season game at the University of Miami, rather than compromise by not bringing their black players. (Miami, like other southern schools at the time, refused to compete against integrated schools unless they left their black players at home.)
In 1948, Triplett became the first African-American to play in the Cotton Bowl Classic, catching the tying touchdown in Penn State's 13-13 tie with Southern Methodist University. It has been suggested Penn State's now-famous "We Are Penn State!" stadium cheer has its origins in SMU's request for a meeting to protest the participation of Penn State's two black players (Triplett and Hoggard). Team captain Steve Suhey was said to have responded, "We are Penn State. There will be no meetings."
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